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The Energy Blog is where all topics relating to The Energy Revolution are presented. Increasingly, expensive oil, coal and global warming are causing an energy revolution by requiring fossil fuels to be supplemented by alternative energy sources and by requiring changes in lifestyle. Please contact me with your comments and questions. Further Information about me can be found HERE.

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February 21, 2007

Pulverized Coal vs IGCC

Two recent newspaper articles discuss the arguments as to whether pulverized coal or IGCC power plants are the better coal fired power plants to build, in the context of suitability to control greenhouse gas emissions.

Environmentalists are worried, but they put their faith in a technology that gasifies the coal before burning. Such plants are designed, they say, to be more adaptable to separating the carbon and storing it underground.

Most utility officials counter that the gasification approach is more expensive and less reliable, but they say there is no need to worry because their tried-and-true method, known as pulverized coal, can also be equipped later with hardware to capture the global warming gas.

The NYT reports that a study, to be released soon by MIT, indicates that it is not clear which technology will allow for the easiest carbon capture, because so much engineering work remains to be done.

Bruce H. Braine, the vice president for strategic policy analysis at American Electric Power, which plans to build two gasification plants said there is demonstrable evidence that separating carbon from gasified coal would work better than at a pulverized coal plant; “we think it’s the right thing to do to move the I.G.C.C. technology forward.

The February 16 issue of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram had article that pitted off statements made by or in behalf of TXU and NRG Energy. TXU Corp.'s plans to build 11 pulverized coal-fired power plants in Texas and NRG Energy proposes to build a coal-gasification plant in South Texas.

The rival technologies presented their opposing arguments at the Cambridge Research Associates conference in Houston. Each side claimed that its technology will more efficiently protect residents from pollution.

Tim Curran, president of Alstom USA of Windsor, Conn., whose company is three to five years away from developing carbon capture technology for pulverized coal plants, said that pulverized coal is superior because America's existing power-generating fleet can retrofitted instead of building brand-new generating plants. He called the promises of coal-gasification "hype."

David Crane of NRG Energy conceded that gasification is 20% more expensive than traditional pulverized coal technology, but called other arguments against it "myths."

Crane said that gasification is more expensive because each plant is custom-built. As more gasification plants are built, he said, gasification would enjoy the same cookie-cutter design advantages and construction efficiencies that traditional pulverized-coal plants enjoy.

Now correct me if I'm wrong here, but pulverized coal has a maximum possible efficentcy of about 45% while IGCC has an efficency of up to 60%. This means that IGCC should produce about one quater less CO2 regardless of whether or not CO2 is captured for sequestion, so IGCC seems superior.

Of course other factors such as the cost difference between the two types of coal plants and the type of coal available and would have to be considered, as would the cost of releasing carbon into the atmosphere.

POWER ENGINEERING magazine has a good article on the cost of different generation technologies depending of proposed regulations for ghg. Considering the choices for base load generation, it look like a tie. If ghg is regulated in the future, nuclear has an economic advantage.

I see nothing in this solution that decreases the amount of mercury and other pollutants that ends up in groundwater sources, streams and rivers. It does not seem to mitigate the harmful effects of mining, processing, and transporting coal.
I would rather see research and development of non-polluting energy generation technologies instead.

Unless I'm missing something, you can't burn pulverized coal in a gas turbine, so you can't use combined-cycle gas burbine / steam turbine. Thus, you're getting a lot less KWH out of the same tonnage of coal. The tradeoff must be highly dependent on two assumptions:
1)cost of coal
2)cost of capital for the plant equipment

The artical is excelent. To me the conclusion should be that we need to slow down the new coal plant process and do some engineering on extracting the carbon dioxide. I believe power plants are rushing to get coal plants approved because they suspect the next administration will be less friendly. I would hope someone would do an artical on what is actually needed in the near term.

There is more detail from pdfs and sites that I link to from this article.

http://advancednano.blogspot.com/2007/02/trying-to-clean-up-coal.html

A more detailed comparison of IGCC and other clean coal tech is at this link (which is from the first article I mention above)
http://www.climatevision.gov/pdfs/coal_roundtable/dalton.pdf

If they make supercritical pulverized coal or IGCC the pollution from the plants will be little less for CO2 and substantially less for most of the other dozen or so pollutants. The costs are in the range of $1500/KWe for the supercritical and IGCC without sequestering. About $2000/KWe with sequestering.

A retrofit to supercritical plants for existing super-dirty plants is $700/KWe. The super-dirty plants got grandfathered from having to clean up to event 1980 style scrubbers and filters. Force those to be cleaned up and get rid of 90% of other pollutants other than CO2.

Nuclear is $1600-2000/KWe depending on make and model. 99% less CO2 and zero particulates, mercury etc...
http://www.platts.com/Magazines/Insight/2006/december/2xu006120BO7J1U0533s5B_1.xml

Noooooo! While I'm not a purist by any means, this just strikes me as wrong, wrong, wrong. I realize I'm just a layman, and a lot of you are far more sophisticated, but one of the things that really bug me about this is that it's *building* a new coal-fired plant. If you're going to build something, why not invest in an alternative form of energy?

Why do we keep reading about "unknown issues" and "engineering work yet to be done" regarding IGCC plants? Tampa Electric (TECO Energy) has been operating an IGCC plant for 10 years. They can provide detailed real-world data regarding the performance, operational costs and reliability of such plants. Why do all these academics act as if that plant does not exist? Why isn't that plant's experience published for public consumption? Just tell us what the numbers are, TECO. And then we can all stop arguing about IGCC.

The simple thing to understand is the overall supply and demand situation. Do not get confused by the units, just the overall numbers.

Look at the tables at this link
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/aeoref_tab.html

The main one to look at is
Table 1. Total Energy Supply and Disposition Summary

You will notice that the consumption of energy line 49 is 102.35 quadrillion BTU

In 2012, the demand has gone up to 108.97.
Other renewables (wind and solar) have to go up 600% to meet the five year growth. This would be without replacing any coal.

If you say OK. no new coal and no new nuclear. then what happens is the black outs and brown outs in California when you do not have enough power to meet demand.

If you say no coal and no nuclear (ie. shut the old plants down) you are short 31 quadrillion BTU. 30 times all of the other renewables.

Line 21 other renewable energy is 1.14 quadrillion BTU.

line 41-43 are the consumption of 87 quadrillion BTU of oil, natural gas and coal (23.25 for coal)

You will notice that the coal line is 20 times bigger than other renewable.

To understand how much power we are talking about.
Hydro is 2.82 (quad BTU) (equals 79,511 MW * the availability) and that includes Hoover (2.1GW) and Grand Coulee (6.8GW) Dam. Those two big dams are one eighth of the total Hydro power.

Coal energy in the USA is 8 times bigger than all of the hydro in the USA.

The call to reduce the use of coals is valid for western countries but unfortunately, coal reports show developing economies are more likely to increase their use of coal in coming years because of its affordability and to meet increasing demands for electricity and steel for the coal industry. www.coalportal.com